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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241636604|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Merryn GloverGary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035021803|title=The Hidden FiresAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=TravelScience Fiction|summary= It is always ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the book, not the writershape of things to come.'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but there are times when I'm left with the authorfeeling that it's hinterland all getting away from me. Some of it is also - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the background to possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the book latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and so it who could deliver information in a way I could understand.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sunny Singh|title=Hotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Thrillers |summary=The Hotel Arcadia is necessary to understand a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that context, in order to appreciate the bookhas suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Merryn Glover Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is of Australian parentageSam, was born in Kathmandua wartime photographer and Abhi, grew up in the Annapurna and Himalayan and now lives in Badenoch in Scotlandhotel manager. I can think of no-one better a combination As Abhi continues to try to give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than care remotely for the first Writer in Residence residents who are still alive in the Cairngorms National Park. Merryn walkshotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, not so much in the shadow and keeps on venturing out of Shepherd, but in her spiritroom to try to capture what's happened through her photography. I think Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the two would have gotten along famouslyterrorists.|isbn=1846975751086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alice M Ross1529153298|title=The Nowhere ThiefList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=At last there It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is new stock in the impoverished yet over-full antiques shop Elsbeth and her mother run in a seaside townPrime Minister. Elsbeth knows this because she has stolen it(A woman? I mean, honestly... ) She also knows she should be free from worries about being found out's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she has 's overheard that her father wants to move the ability to leave this worldfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, and use an unworldly portal of kaleidoscope colours to enter other worldsforeign place, where the sea levels are rising dramatically and the buildings are generally empty of humans and ripe for plunderbest avoided. With eviction imminentFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, can Elsbeth nab and she'll do anything to actually generate custom at the shop? prevent that. Well yes, is She's not worried about the answer, but the fact a mysterious man knows exactly which items come from these different Somewheres only raises more questions…|isbn=1839943769dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15295047751398524085|title=The Toy Bus (The Repair Shop Stories)Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Amy Sparkes and Katie HickeyNicci French|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Elsie Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her little brother David loved to go to the park and watch the red buses drive pastdaughter, Etty. Elsie would race the buses along the side of the park are all worried but David couldn't - he'd been born with cerebral palsy and even just standing up was very difficult. One day Elsie spotted a bus in the toy shop window which would help David strangely - and was happy to use the coins from her money box to pay for it as cash was tight at homehusband, Alec, is not. GraduallyShortly afterwards, David learned to stand upEtty and Greg, use find the bus for supportbody of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, and walk behind itin the river. Many decades later, Elsie brought It was an easy assumption for the bus, now damaged and rusted, police to the Repair Shop, hoping make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the experts guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there could make it so that her grandchildren could play 's little else they can do but get on with ittheir lives and wonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18479418341035906708|title=Atomic HabitsDiva|author=James ClearDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleGeneral Fiction|summary=I've said this before We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but there are some books that you seek outshe was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, some books that you stumble across in December 1923 and some books that drop into your life because you really MUST read them, like, right now! only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas'Atomic Habits'' to make it more manageable in the States. is When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the last categoryNazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Natasha FarrantChristopher Edge|title=The Rescue of RavenwoodBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=54
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=This story is another excellent adventure from Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the author nickname of ''Voyage of the Sparrowhawk'The Black Hole'. Ravenwood is an old houseAll big movie fans, in the North they're looking forward to lots of Englandexciting films, where Bea and Raffy have been living for most of their lives. many, many snacks! They are part of a complex, extended family arrangementHowever, as Bea is there with her Uncle Leothe movie starts, and Raffy they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is there with his mumvery different, and they are living together as a family. They have grown swept up swimming in the cove, roaming through the trees, completely at one with all of the nature around the house and loving every inch of the placeinto an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But now the house is under threat, as Leo is under pressure they lurch from his other two brothers one film genre to sell the property to a developer as it's becoming more and more expensive to maintain. next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? The children find themselves worrying not only about where Will they're going ever get back to live, but if they'll even be togetherthe cinema, and if Ravenwood itself will be torn down.to their real lives?|isbn=05713487851839942738
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{{Frontpage
|author=Nick BrooksRachel Greenlaw|title=Promise BoysCompass and Blade|rating=43.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=When ''I can hear the principal (headmaster) song of Urban Promise Prep school the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.'' Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is murderedone of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, three boys find themselves called into they capture the police station as suspectsisland's leader and Mira's father. EachDesperate to save him from death, seeminglyMira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, has she sets off in search of a grudge family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of some description against Principal Moorethe smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and each could the ones she holds most dear.|isbn=0008664730}}{{Frontpage|author=James Sherwood Metts|title=Planet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Things have been there at a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of his murderother, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. But who killed himLife was pretty much shut down and, and whyalong with it, and if any of all the boys are innocent, will many daily social interactions on which they be able to clear their names?depend so heavily.|isbn=10350031551736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=G K HollowayMatthew Tree|title=In the Shadows of CastlesWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary= We begin after the momentous battle in 1066 Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and on the day chronic underachiever whose dreams of William being exceptional at any of Normandy's coronation as King his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of England. William's position is not secure and the new king has many challenges. Imposing authority through a coronation is importantself confidence. And William is right So Tim applied himself to worry. While the previous kinghis studies, Harold, is dead cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and the likelihood of more pitched battles is over, the rebels are stirring and much of the country does not wish to recognise a new overlordset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=1800422466B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008506337A G Slatter|title=The Garnett Girls|author=Georgina MooreBriar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionFantasy|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that RichardThere's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle part of Wight. Margo did go me that wants to Oxford and went on keep this just to become a well-respected journalistmyself for however long I can. The couple had three children: RachelThis secret magic of my own, all mine, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wightlast. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able I just want to leave him in chargeenjoy it for a while.''.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15291259601529900360|title=Unnatural HistoryThe Ghost Orchid
|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Donny Klement was a photographer. Well, it was Adonis, actually, but Donny had stuck unless he got Danny but whichever - itIt hadn's past tense as his PA found him dead in his bed. Three shots were placed neatly through his heart. The PA, Mel Gornick, is distraught and it falls to psychologist Alex Delaware to calm her down whilst Lieutenant t been Lt Milo Sturgis gets more agitated as he tries to establish what's happened. Donny fault that Alex Delaware had just finished a series of photographs called ''The Wishers''. He'd taken eight homeless people off the streets been badly injured but he felt responsible and asked them what they'd really like even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to beask for his help on difficult cases. They His assertions that there were then dressed up as their fantasy, photographed only open-and sent on their way with a generous gift in dollars.}}{{Frontpage|author=Robin Birch and Jobe Anderson|title=Secret Beast Club: The Unicorns of Silver Street|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Jayden-shut cases which didn's nose is forever in a book, which means he knows a lot about mythological creatures – t need the phoenixes and unicorns help of the world, a psychologist only worked for example. Aisha is addicted to her new tablet, where she can see videos of anything that might be out therea while. The problemFinally, as their mothers see itwas Robin, is that they are never Delaware'out there' themselvess partner, exploring the outside world of Hackney, Londonwho nudged Milo into asking for help again. But when a narrowboat turns up carrying a science-minded, educational purpose, and with a past involving Jayden's cousin, they find a magical world they never She knew existedthat the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. For many of those mythological creatures are realThe next case did look simple, including the one Aisha thinks she's seen on a bit of local footagethough. The crew Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of the boat, including a living gargoyle, are tasked with saving the rare critters – and the kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed to join remote property inBel Air. Dare they side with Leila, He was the woman on board, heir to an Italian shoe empire and her relative who lives as a figure in a painting, she is married to an extremely rich man and become saviours it's not the Italian. But which of them was the unseenprimary target?|isbn=0241573483
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=19138396561529395224|title=Let's Celebrate Being DifferentLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Lainey DeeSion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=For SharingAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Todd Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was excited about spending the weekend with a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his grandmotherfootsteps, not least because she made particularly when he considered the best beetle juice. He packed two pairs of dungarees and his favourite hat and then gathered together his button collection to show strain that being on-call put on his grandmotherfather's life. She had promised to take him to When he was seventeen he took the Friday Night Club at the local community centre opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and Todd was pleased about convinced this as he wanted to make new friendswas the job for him. At homeBefore long, his only friend he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with so many students - been his mum and dream since he wondered why that could bewas a child. Grandma thought that it might If anything, he'd wanted to be because he looked differenta professional footballer.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17873010360861541774|title=What July KnewA Nye of Pheasants|author=Emily KochSteve Burrows|rating=54|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=When we first meet July Hooper on 20 July 1995 sheDCI Domenic Jejeune's just ten years close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an oldally, Guy Trueman. She's Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a careful, meticulous childGhurka. The care has been taught by her fatherInitially, Mick Hooper, who is not prepared he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to discuss the death of his wife, July's mother, and any hint light that the conversation is heading suggested that way will lead he might have planned to murder the necessity of a Lessonman. Other infractions of his requirements also lead to these Lessons and Now he's not even careful about whether or not could be facing the injuries are visibledeath penalty. July's teacher is concerned Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and brings up the possibility of abuse with the head but her worries are dismissed: Mick has been good to the school, has he not? The playground wouldn't have been resurfaced but for himhelp Danny at all.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy AsheAlexander McCall Smith|title=Clara and OliviaThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The year Perfect Passion Company is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – disciplinedating agency in Edinburgh, attention run by Ness and operating as an alternative to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from all the classroom. A stage presence, online apps in providing a charmmore personal, a ''joie de vivre''tailored service. The difference between a hard-worker, Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and a star.|isbn=0861544080}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008454493|title=All look after the Dangerous Things|author=Stacy Willingham|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Isabelle Drake hasn't really slept for business, as Ness is planning to take a year - well, apart from the odd occasion when she lost track of time or drifted off trip to Canada to get away for a momentwhile. It's now Katie is coming out of a break up with a year since her son, Masonbad boyfriend, was stolen from his bed in the middle of the night and Izzy is consumed with guilt that she heard nothing and particularly about her relief in so jumps at the morning when she thought he was sleeping inchance to come home to Edinburgh. In that year she's done everything she could And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to raise awareness about 44 Scotland Street and the case. She does interviews and when we meet herIsabel Dalhousie novels, she's just been but with some new characters who quickly begin to TrueCrimeCon where she gave a keynote presentationcharm. On the plane backKatie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, sheand there's approached by a podcasteralways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, Waylon SpencerWilliam, who points out that she could do a podcast and get to so many more people than she could by giving speeches to lend a few hundred people at conferences.hand…|isbn=1846976596
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene0811771741|title=Fritz and KurtInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=We start with the pair Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes knits from toys to the synagogue choir and at a vocational schoolblankets. Kurt has to make sure Some will be quick knits - others are of the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – long, cosy afternoons in front of the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switchfire' variety. But this is The projects are divided by the time just before the Austrian leader is going they'll take to cave complete - less than five hours, five to Hitler's willten hours, ten to twenty hours and instead of having a national vote to keep more than twenty hours. All the Nazis outprojects are attractive, invite them in with open armsmodern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects'Kristallnachtbut that'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jewss me being picky. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|isbn=024156574X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529421241Dean Koontz|title=Stay Buried|author=Kate WebbThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeParanormal|summary=DI Matt Lockyer Benny is on Major Crime Review which sounds quite grand until you realise that it's actually having a cold case unit terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and there are just two of them doing the jobhis house gets trashed. LockyerOh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's not unduly worriedpossible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, though although he's not quite so sure about DC Gemma Broad: she's probably capable of something betterBenny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. It was So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a bit of new friend, a shock when he got the phone call bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from Hedy Lambert: she's in H M Prison Eastwood Park nefarious forces for murder - and it was Lockyer who put her there, fourteen years agobeing a good person. SheSpike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's keen to see him enemies, if he, Benny, and to tell him that the man everyone thought sheHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny'd murdered - but the body turned s wild adventure) can figure out to be someone else - has returned home after being away for decadeswho exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0BQXSYYTFAdam Stower|title=Just Looking|author=Matthew TreeMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Dystopian FictionConfident Readers |summary=It was the summer of 2035 Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and on a cruise ship in Marseilles, Jim was celebrating well, whatever takes his new-found wealth and fancy next of the end of his marriage - not two celebrations generally found in the same sentence by a man! . HeBut he's watching the tornado - they're more common in Europe these days - thata bad magician's keeping cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the cruise ship in port and falls catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into conversation with Jean-Pierrethe regular back garden, but into a French journalist in his thirtiesworld of frightening adventure and whiffs. He writes for This time round it drops them into a relatively new paperViking land, the right-wing ''La Tribune Gauloise'' and he's interesting if where a little wordy on subjects such as the difference between 'France' and 'the French'. His partnertroll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, Helento be honest, whobut he's English turned up and Jewish, keeps him in check he'll have to some extent.do…|isbn=0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=057137493XB0C47LV1PC|title=The Other HalfFragility|author=Charlotte VassellMosby Woods|rating=54|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Can you make a ''The room was full of the sort of people Yo birthing person''Tatler'' thinks joke? And if you could, is the question should knowyou make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.''
''The Other HalfFragility'' is set as the story city of two menPortland, both with what looks like the same surname. Rupert Beauchamp is the heir Oregon, cautiously begins to a baronetcy and his thirtieth birthday party is a catered-with-butler event at McDonalds in Camden Town. Think Bollinger and cocaine. His surname is pronounced 'Beecham'. Caius Beauchamp is a detective inspector with emerge from the Metropolitan police and is bi-racial. His surname is pronounced as you see it. The two encounter each other when Caius, out for a run, stumbles across restrictions imposed during the body of Clemmie O'Hara, Rupert's girlfriend. Rupert thought that she was being deliberately late for his party. She was dead under a bush.covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joe Thomas1529431735|title=White RiotThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary= Whenever anyone writes fiction about politics thereIt's always February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been exiled on the danger of making it too reactionary; too rawCosta del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. Knee The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-jerk observations wife, saying that she's ill and hot takes that donhasn't age well or properly capture the spirit of the momentlong to live. It takes a truly talented writer 's hard to be able to capture the zeitgeist of a particular event or era of political history. Austerity Britain, the student riots, Donald Trump, Brexit – so much of what feel any sympathy when Hopkins isabducted, stripped to his underwear and has been, written in the immediate aftermath of these phenomena has been proven by time sent to be frothy and insubstantial and ultimately not particularly powerful or incisive. Inevitably (and perhaps disappointingly for people who do enjoy fiction of this nature), the best writing about current political events is that which is written when the events a watery grave in question are no longer current and when time and experience has afforded the writer the benefit boot of a more objective viewstolen Ford Sierra.|isbn= 1529423376 Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Heather FawcettAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia The Glorious Race of FaeriesMagical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Emily Wilde Eli is a busy lad – by day an expert academic scholar on faerie loreapprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and she has travelled extensivelyin the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, and researched meticulouslytoo – for there is a generation missing in the family. A few short years ago, to write her lifeEli's workparents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the very first encyclopaedia company of faeriesa magical beast. Whilst she is brilliant This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at research and speaking the eatery leads to faeriesa confession from gran, she Eli knows his only hope is not so good to dare to enter what he most hates, with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village sole aim the prize of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended magic at the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on end – the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much only thing to Emily's frustrationpossibly save his gran. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|isbn=03565191200571382231
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1848458436178763681X|title=Just the Nicest CoupleKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Mary KubicaOrlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn''The whole thing has spiralled out t really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of control, turning into someone I'm notgetting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul '' somehow''Just got the Nicest Couple'impression that he' is d be at the story of two couples: Christian and Lily Scottschool to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, and Nina and Jake Hayesbut it didn't turn out that way. The connection between the two is that Lily teaching - and Nina teach in the same school: Nina teaches English and Lily covers high school algebraproblems - are all his own. The couples have mixed as a foursome but it's not a regular one thing. Christian is a market research analyst and Jake is a neurosurgeon: they donhe hadn't have much in common except their wivesexpected was for someone to turn up dead. Lily hasn't said anything yetUnfortunately, but she's pregnant. She has a lengthy history of miscarriages so she doesn't want he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to tempt fate by making be the knowledge publicprime suspect.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1914585402Sarah Marsh|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F RossA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a couple time when the use of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it sign language wasseen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. It was From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a grippingsystem called Visible Speech. At the same time, emotionally wounding readBell is working on other inventions and ideas, and rereading my review Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on itespionage.|isbn=1035401614
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=178563335X1803816759|title=Sea DefencesThe Unravelling|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|author=Hadeer Elsbai|title=The Daughters of IzdiharWill Gibson
|rating=4
|genre=FantasyScience Fiction|summary= Drawing inspiration from Egypt, It''The Daughters s 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of Izdihar'' explores adventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with the lives of two women who could not be more differentAI system that now runs everything, yet find themselves fighting making life easier for the rights of women many, and weavers – those with magical abilities - in a society pitted against themriots start to spread. NehalFinally, born into Joe gets to do some real policing. In the upper class, wishes to attend aftermath of the Weaving Academy to learn rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to control bring her abilities and then join home. Joe isn't the militaryonly one trying to save Suki - Dylan, but instead she is forced into an arranged marriage with Nico. Giorgina on the other hand did not have a privileged upbringing like Nehal British superfan and feels great pressure to provide for her family and maintain their reputationtech nerd, whilst secretly attending meetings of is also on the Daughters of Izdihar – a group campaigning for women's rights. Giorgina also happens to be in love with Nicocase. What follows went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is a story of an unjust society, filled with hypocrisy and cruelty, from which blossoms a group of admirable women fighting for their rights and overcoming their personal obstacles.|isbn=0356520471Suki's kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Todd Taylor1529421284|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Spoonful of SpyingLaying Out the Bones|author=Kate Webb|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=[[Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble by Sarah Todd Taylor|Last time around]], Alice Eclair had to prove herself as It was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a spy and as heatwave. In a master at all things French and fancy and fondantgully, as the only way a human skeleton came to save the day involved being an expert baker surface and icer on forensic testing proved the French railwaysbody to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earlier. HereHe'd been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, we start on so it could have been a bateau-mouche in Paris, and even though the espionage isnsimple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't a complete success it proves to Alice and her handlers that things are afootconvinced. And there will never be more feet than at the World's FairGeary was a townie, reviving so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to the huge expo that gave the city the Eiffel Tower suicide of Holly Gilbert and this time showing all her interwar glories off to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the worldtime. Once again Alice will have to present Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the front Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to the world of being a humble yet world-class cake decorator, while seeking out cluesyou and me) investigate. At stake? Pioneering flight technology that the enemy just cannot be allowed to smuggle out…|isbn=1839940972
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Amanthi Harris0571379559|title=Beautiful PlaceThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Padma''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, a young Sri Lankanbut instead, has returned to she lives in the Villa Hibiscus house on the southern coast riverbank, built of her home countrybroken bricks. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born intoInsubstantial as it might look, but it's stood the one she thinks passage of as hometime, storms and floods. How she came Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to be at complete the Villa, how it became her home, delivery rounds - and the machinations that to bring in sufficient money. They have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'scores Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they' for this gentle re related, much less twins and yet subtly violent novel. Padmathere's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, an assumption when Max is out with his mother that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villashe's his nanny.|isbn=1784631930
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Nigel Baines1529425867|title=Lost and Never Found (A Tricky Kind of MagicD I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon Mason
|rating=4.5
|genre=Emerging ReadersCrime|summary=Cooper loves to perform magic tricksIn Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. His D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and father was a magicianof Ryan, and named Cooper after the great Tommy Cooperis not. He's not any of those things. But sadly CooperHe's father died suddenlywhite, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and now Cooper doesnhis wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies. They't quite know who to be, re usually in lime green or how to beacid yellow. And when his dadYou might wonder if you's prop rabbit starts talking re being introduced to hima police procedural written for laughs. Well, he you're not. The two men are just different sides of the same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it'really'' doesns problematic.}}{{Frontpage|author=Mosby Woods|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= The West isn't know the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what's going on anymore!will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=1444960261B0C9SNG8R1
}}
